A Love Hate Relationship
by MCRmyShriek
Summary: Draco has mixed feelings for Ginny. His heart and his mind are telling him two different things. Ginny is also confused about her feelings about Draco and the reasons behind his actions. What will Draco do when his values are tested?
1. Mixed Feelings

Draco sat on his bed, staring down at the Dark Mark burning on his left arm. He had just received the mark three hours ago, and it still burned on his skin. But not nearly the agony of when the Dark Lord's wand touched his flesh to brand the mark on him forever.

Tomorrow he would be returning to Hogwarts, more distant from the other students than he had ever been.

From downstairs, he heard his mother's scream, then a harsh shout from his father. She was a powerful, unaffected woman when she was serving the Dark Lord; taking torture and killing without a second though, but she fell to pieces in front of his father. Lucius Malfoy was not the model father, not at all.

Draco didn't know where he would be if his father hadn't gotten him caught up in this pointless war, but he imagined he would be happier and maybe he would be with her. With that calming thought in his head, Draco fell asleep.

As he stepped onto the Hogwart's Express, Draco saw her fiery hair disappear onto the train. A small smile lit up his face. He had heard she was prefect this year.

Draco searched for an empty compartment, opening doors only to see unfamiliar faces. He saw her chatting with her friends in a crowded compartment. He moved on, and finally found a totally deserted compartment. He put his luggage overhead and sat down in silence. Suddenly, the compartment door opened and a red head poked in. Ginny spotted Draco sitting there, frowned, but came in and sat down.

"What do you want, Weasley?" he snapped.

"Everywhere is full, so I'm sitting here, like it or not." She snapped, studied him for a minute, then spoke again with a softer tone to her voice. "What's wrong?" she asked and brushed her hair out of her face.

"I could ask you the same thing." Draco said, and grabbed her wrist. He pulled her long sleeve away from her arm to reveal small pink scars crisscrossing her skin.

"How did you know?" she asked, surprisingly not pulling her hand away.

"Easy. Your sleeve slipped when you brushed your hair away."

"Well, they're just cat scratches," Ginny said to defend herself.

"Sure." Draco said with a smirk. "If it'll make you feel any better… here," he finished, pulling his right sleeve up. Ginny gasped, seeing similar scars there. She reached out and traced one, making Draco shiver. As she scooted back in her seat, her hand brushed Draco's left arm and she gasped. Draco put his hand over the spot on his arm and realized that his skin was still burning. Ginny looked at his face and sighed.

"Why?" she asked sadly. "Is that what you want?"

"No. It was never what I wanted, but there's no telling father that."

"What do you want?" she asked, and the trust in her eyes made him want to trust her right back. But Malfoys are slow to trust, so he told her the simplest thing he wanted.

"I want to be normal, to know that I am a kid and that's all; not a Death Eater, I want to trust; to not have to hide, to be able to feel again, to cry, to love."

They sat in silence for a moment, then Ginny moved to sit beside him. Without realizing what he was doing, Draco leaned in and attempted to kiss her. Instead he found himself falling foreword off the seat and onto the floor. He looked up at Ginny, who was staring sadly at him.

"I'm sorry. That's just too sudden." she said.

Draco immediately regained his composure and retorted "You think I was trying to kiss you Weasel? No wonder you look so sad- that would have been the best kiss of your life, huh?"

Ginny shook her head at him as the train pulled into the station. "Same old Malfoy."

Draco climbed into one of the waiting carriages, and was quickly found by Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy. Pansy began to speak, but one look from Draco stopped her in mid-sentence.

The event on the train just proved what he should have already known. Ginevra Weasley found him as cold and cruel as the rest of the world. Even his so-called friends were afraid of him.

He wished he weren't that way, but his father had taught him that showing feelings was showing weakness, and he couldn't reverse what had been drilled into his head since he was small.

Draco saw her whispering to Granger as he walked to the Slytherin table. Granger pointed in his direction and squealed loudly, causing Potter and the older Weasley to come running over. They asked what was wrong, but the girls just shook their heads and burst into giggles. Well, at least that embarrassing incident wouldn't be the talk of the school. Suddenly, Ginny glanced over and Draco turned away, not wanting to meet her eye.

At the Gryffindor table Ginny sat, trying to hide her confusion. Draco Malfoy had always been absolutely horrible to all of them for as long as she could remember, but now he was showing that he truly could feel, and he was showing it to the most unlikely of people. But part of her still wondered if there was something more behind it, something he could gain by bringing her close. She shuddered at the thought. Hermione gave her a questioning look and she lowered her eyes to her food. She thought about Draco all through the feast, trying to figure him out.

Draco slept fitfully the next day. His troubled thoughts of Ginny kept him up long into the night, and when he dosed off he would dream of her soft skin against his, only to wake up trying to deny what his sleeping brain had revealed. He hated her, but he wanted her more than anything. As he drifted back into his pleasing dreams once again, he knew it would be a long night.


	2. The Power of Death

As Ginny glanced over at the Slytherin table for the third time that morning, Hermione followed her gaze and laughed.

"You like him don't you?" she said.

"Oh sure, I absolutely love him." Ginny said sarcastically. "No, I'm just wondering about him; what it would be like to be in his position? Do you really think he meant it when he tried to kiss me on the train?"

"With Malfoy, you never know, but be careful. It might be for real but I don't want to know what his reasons are if he's not." Hermione said with a shudder.

Draco felt her eyes on him all through breakfast. What did that mean, he wondered? Was she interested in him, or was she just watching her back? He tried to tell himself it didn't matter, but his heart was fighting his mind. So, he would have to try it again.

He pulled a scrap of parchment and his quill from his pocket and scribbled a note. Draco whispered a spell, and heard a gasp from the Gryffindor table.

Ginny picked up the note that had just appeared on her plate, and began to unfold it. Hermione leaned over Ginny's shoulder to read it, but Ginny shielded the note so Hermione couldn't see.

Good girl, Draco thought. When she finished reading it, Ginny turned and looked around for the sender of the note, but he was already turned back around, grinning into his plate.

_Meet me outside the trophy room at 11pm tonight._

_Signed, _

_ Wouldn't you like to know? _

Yes, I would, Ginny thought. She debated on whether or not to go, but in the end decided that she would bring her wand and stay on guard the whole time, just in case.

She sat through all her classes, paying little attention and she could barely sit still.

After her last class, she went back to the common room and paced nervously, finally racing out the portrait hole at eleven. She snuck down the corridors to the trophy room, wand concealed carefully beneath her robes.

She was standing there, wondering if she had been tricked, when a cold hand grabbed hers. An arm wrapped around her waist and she was pulled close to the unseen body behind her.

A voice whispered in her ear, "Hello Ginny, I'm very glad you came." The voice sent shivers up her spine. It was frightening, yet calm, and made her want to forget everything else. There was also something familiar about it; something that made her tense and alert.

"Who are you?" she asked fearfully.

"Well," the voice spoke, laughing "I think you enjoyed my company so much on the train you just had to see me again."

"Draco?" Ginny gasped. She was then spun around to face those deep grey eyes that changed slowly from a piercing, stormy grey to a soft one.

For what seemed like forever they just stared at each other, reading the pain hidden in the two eyes that hid emotion so well. Then a third voice interrupted their meeting.

"Draco, I decided to drop in and visit you. It seems you have given me the perfect opportunity to test you. I'm sure that your Malfoy blood will make this an easy task."

They both spun around to see Lucius Malfoy grinning in the shadows. "Bring the girl here," he said, and Draco dragged Ginny foreword. "The Weasley girl? Interesting choice, a pity she's a pureblood, but she'll do."

"For what?" Draco asked.

"Why, your first task as a Death Eater, of course," He replied simply. "A Death Eater must know how to kill."

Ginny looked at Draco. His face showed a wave of excitement that confused her. Then she realized Draco didn't want to be a Death Eater, but the power of taking another life appealed to him. She supposed that it was a thing he got from his father; that hunger for power was one reason witches and wizards joined Voldemort.

"Do you have your wand?" Lucius asked, and Draco pulled his wand from his pocket. He was filled with a nervous, wanting-to-please energy. He wanted to impress his father, so he turned to Ginny with a stony expression on his face and shouted the incantation.

"_Avada Kedavra!" _he cried, and Ginny crumpled to the floor. He did not have enough power to kill instantaneously like the curse was meant to, and Ginny looked up at him, her face full of pain. Draco looked at her and fell to her side, grasping her hand.

"I hate you." she whispered.

"I love you too, Ginny." Draco replied sadly as the last light faded from Ginny's eyes. He stood up, hiding the sorrow in his face.

"Well done, Draco. Now hurry back to your bed before some one arrives to see what the noise was," Lucius said, and with a swish of his cloak he disappeared down the corridor to escape Hogwarts.

Draco rushed back to his dormitory, feeling numb inside. He had been deceived. The power of death was not a power he wanted, but it was too late now. He wished he could rid himself of the pain but his sorrow was too great to raise his wand again, even to his own heart. So he moved on, every day passing by unnoticed until finally he was allowed the relief that death brought when Mr. Weasley found out Draco had killed his daughter.


End file.
